Linux (Linux Mint) Asus A8JS

Hello all:
I just wanted to tell you that I have been running Linux Mint http://lt.k1011.nutime.de/index.html
which is Ubuntu 6.10 with video and audio codecs included, on my Asus A8JS (T7200, 120GB HDD,2GB RAM)
It runs out of the box, even detects the wireless chip and Bluetooth. I have been running this for about a month now with no issues.


Alex

 

Nice! thanks for sharing

 

Congratulations on a successful set up!

I'm testing Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 1 at the moment. NetworkManager is finally defaulted, so wireless for my card now works completely out of the box from first boot.

 

how is Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 1? I was looking into it but being so new to Linux in general I doubt I could be of much help in its development.

I wish ubuntu would come out with another LTS version so that we could have better hardware support. I will probably be looking into LinuxMint for that reason.

 

That will be sweet. The networking is one thing keeping me from using linux more.

 

RefinedPower: Better hardware support? What do you mean? I have everything working native, I just had to plug in to download the knetworkmanager right after I installed the system. All of my devices were detected though, and work perfectly.

CalebSchmerge: What networking support are you missing? Because I've found that networking under Linux is much better than under Windows. There's a reason that many servers and such run Linux... it's got a more stable, configurable and faster networking stack overall.

 

Linux Mint doesn't have any better hardware support than mainstream Ubuntu, the only differences is that Linux Mint comes preinstalled with all those media codecs (that are illegal in some nations and are easily installable in Ubuntu anyways).

As for Herd 1 itself, it is very difficult to install some things. 3D will be a bit of a nightmare until the repositories are updated. It actually seems quite stable though, but I would recommend you stick to 6.06 or 6.10 for the moment.

Networking really is getting better by the week. I can say safely that it is now easier to set up than Windows XP.

kNetworkManager and network-manager-gnome now comes installed, so even less work for you!

 

6.06 LTS recognized all of my hardware. 6.10 did not recognize my wireless card or set my screen resolution correctly. I did not try to play with 6.10 any more preferring 6.06 were everything just seemed to work.

Slyvain why would they make a whole linux distro just to include a few audio codecs? Seems as though its easy enough to add them to Ubuntu without having to make a whole distro for it. I have a feeling that they are adding a little more than just audio codecs.

 

I don't know, but they did.

Oh, and they put a new theme on: http://lt.k1011.nutime.de/about.html

 

I have downloaded the ISO so I will see if it has any improvements over the standard Ubuntu 6.10, besides the audio codecs. Also I hear it comes standard with FireFox 2.0

 

well, Mint is literally just Ubuntu 6.10 all the legally ambiguous stuff (audio/video, DVDdecss, proprietary dirvers,) and a different default theme.

6.10 comes with FF2.0 as default as well.

 

I'm going to try this distro - I've been looking to easily get my Linux partition back up and running (it was obliterated by my OSX install), and they seem to have hit the nail on the head. No fooling with Java or Flash 9 or Mplayer or restricted modules or what have you? That just leaves NTFS-fuse to install. Sounds like "simple" to me.

And I should point out that I'm not a Linux n00b - I've been using it since mid 2005 on several different machines and now even do simple IT maintenance of it. But I'm also very, very lazy.

 

Just out of curiosity what is NTFS-fuse?

 

they're libraries that give read/write access to NTFS partitions on the same harddrive

mainly useful if you're dual booting with a partition that you share music/videos/whatever between Windows and Linux.

there's NTFS read-only capability in the kernel (I think,) but until very recently read/write has been "experimental" so you still need to install this stuff separately.

 

Interesting, so does experimental mean that they are basically non usable or that they are pretty much out of the bata period?

 

well, a few years ago you risked corrupting your NTFS file system.

now it's pretty much fine. I used it for about a month with no problems before I wiped the drive on my lappy and went Linux-only.

 

Good news for A8Js users. In the newest kernel in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (kernel 2.6.20-2) speedstep works with this computer also with the newest bios

At least I couldn't get it work before. Beryl is working like a charm and Ubuntu has never felt this good in my hands Nvidia stuff like thermal monitor and gpu underclocking are also working out of the box

 

This is good news. I had to back the BIOS down to 204 to get Speedstep to work with latest gentoo-sources (2.6.19-r2).

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-517120.html

 

Thanks for the this info. Very useful. I am now running Sabayon 64 bit on my laptop. Also has all the codecs with it.

 

New bios is available. Version 210. Someone could try if this one works better with 2.6.19 kernel